


through the phone i pull you and drag your voice around

by who_won_the_race_back_home



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Light Angst, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 02:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15809910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/who_won_the_race_back_home/pseuds/who_won_the_race_back_home
Summary: 5 times Zari gets a call from Amaya while she's back in Zambezi, and 1 time she hangs up.





	through the phone i pull you and drag your voice around

**Author's Note:**

> I have been listening to Hop Along's ["Somewhere A Judge"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKFFZWDg_bE) on a loop and this fic came out of that. I honestly don't even care if you read this, just go listen to the song because it is so fucking good.

**1.**

“Miss Tomaz, there’s a call coming through for you,” Gideon chimed from overhead, abruptly cutting off Zari’s music.

“A call for me.” Zari was buried deep in code, running simulations for fun just to keep her skills sharp. “Who the hell would be calling me?”

“It’s Miss Jiwe. Should I patch her through on your communications device?”

“Holy shit. Yeah. Please.”

“Of course,” Gideon said, before the crackle of faint static came over Zari’s ear piece.

“Amaya?”

“Hi, Z.”

How is this-?” Zari stuttered, unsure of even what to ask. “How am I talking to you?”

“I took one of the old comm devices left in the cargo bay. I didn’t think anyone would miss it. It was-I just wanted it in case of an emergency.”

“Wait, what? Are you okay?” Zari asked, a rush of panic swelling in her chest.

“No, no. I’m fine,” Amaya said, with a small laugh. “My resolve just isn’t as good as it once was, I suppose.”

“Oh.” Zari felt her shoulders drop, the anxiety suddenly releasing. She was still stunned this was even happening. “I’m glad you cracked.”

Amaya laughed, bright and infectious, and it pulled right at Zari’s heart, the way it always had. It released a pang of longing that Zari thought she had bottled up and buried deep.

“I missed you,” Amaya said, soft and quiet, in that voice she always used when they were drifting off to sleep at night. “Sometimes it’s a little lonely here.”

“I miss you too,” Zari said. She pushed herself away from her desk and tilted back to stare at the ceiling. "Tell me about Zambesi."

 

**2.**

“So, what are you wearing?”

Zari stumbled while she paced around the room, nearly falling over onto her couch. She had started taking Amaya’s calls over the speaker in her room; it felt more like she was actually there. But at that, Zari fumbled to put Amaya’s voice back on her in-ear comm.

“You can’t just-do you even know what phone sex is?” Zari asked, a little more breathless than she would have liked.

“I was born in 1918, not the dark ages,” Amaya said, her voice still low and sultry. “We had phones. And no texting, so.”

“So you’re telling me you invented that line then,” Zari said, trying to maneuver her embarrassment into something more playful. “Because it’s a little cliche.”

“Okay, fine." Amaya casually slipped back into her conversational tone, a hint of teasing there. "We can talk about the weather in the temporal zone. Any interesting green swirls recently?”

Zari was quiet for a moment.

“Alright, let’s not be hasty here.”

Amaya laughed, and Zari doubled checked to make sure Gideon had locked her door.

 

**3.**

It was late, and Zari laid on her bed, staring at the ceiling where Amaya’s voiced was being pumped through the speaker. Amaya was telling her a story about some stupid thing one of her cousins had done, Zari wasn’t totally paying attention, the ache in her chest clouding her ability to focus on the particulars.

The beacon Amaya had stolen from the Waverider was old, an early version of cross time communication that was really meant for emergencies. There was no way for Zari to call Amaya, she tried every trick she could think of, but in the end, she was at the mercy of Amaya’s ever weakening resolve. Luckily, it didn’t take too long for Amaya to drop the pretense that each call would be the last.

However, it didn’t help that Zari was getting Amaya’s calls out of order. It took her a little while to realize, but on one, Amaya was telling her about the end of the war, and then a few weeks later, she mentioned something about FDR getting elected to his fourth term.

Time travel was very confusing.

At first, Zari just thought it was the bad connection and the distance, but the more Amaya jumped around on her, the more Zari felt every second of the years, or eons, or dimensions, they were apart. It felt like they were never together at just the right time. 

The first couple months, that feeling was easily papered over by the thrill of actually hearing Amaya’s voice, after weeks of silently watching bad sci-fi movies and binge eating doughnuts with Nate. But quickly, the dissonance added up, and neither of them could really keep track of each other’s lives anymore. They kept up the pretense, but it didn’t take long for their conversations to veer off into talking about what Zari just watched on Netflix, or worse, reliving old missions.  

“I want to see you,” Zari said, cutting Amaya off mid-sentence

Amaya was quiet, just the sound of her measured breathing on the line for a long moment. “You know we can’t do that.”

“Why not? Time won’t break if we see each other for a few hours. ”

“Because, Zari. I have to stay here, with my family. With my people.”

“Obviously I’d come to you. I can just take the jump ship when everyone’s sleeping. No one will ever know. Except Gideon, but we’re cool now, right Gideon?”

“Yes, Miss Tomaz.”

“See, even Gideon won’t rat me out.” Zari said, with a small chuckle.  “I love hearing your voice, but I miss you. And getting all these calls out of order just makes it harder and I want-”

“Zari,” Amaya said, cutting her off. “I have to stay here. And if you came, I would be tempted to leave again.”

“Oh.”

“And I can’t leave again.”

“No, I know. It-it’s okay.” Zari sighed.

A long, awkward silence hung between them and Zari could barely hear the sound of Amaya breathing on the other end of the shaky line.

“I have some diagnostics I have to go run. You’ll call again soon?” she finally said.

“Of course.”

 

**4.**

There were a few perks to being the ship’s mechanic. No one else was ever interested in, or even really knew how to access, the communication logs. Gideon, for their part, seemed to be keeping Amaya’s calls between them and Zari. And she knew it was selfish, but Zari just couldn’t help herself from keeping Amaya her little secret. Just for now.

Amaya never mentioned Nate, aside from asking how everyone on the Waverider was, and that felt weird in its own way. Maybe Amaya was calling him too, and they both were trying to keep quiet about it, for the same reason Zari kept quiet; this connection felt too fragile, like anything jarring could sever it instantly.

But maybe (probably) she wasn’t. And Zari just didn’t have the heart to tell him.

It was late. Or early. Some sort of nebulous time when everyone on the ship was usually asleep. Zari was in the library working when one of Amaya’s calls came in. She had all sorts of questions for Zari about the program she was working on, and actually talking through it helped Zari work out some of the bugs. It felt easy, like when Amaya was still on the ship, indulging Zari in one of her late night coding marathons. It was the first time in a while that Zari didn’t have that nagging feeling in the back of her head that they were both kidding themselves. It was just...nice.

Suddenly, as Amaya was in the middle of a story, there was a brief rapping at the door, and before Zari could call out, it opened with a whoosh and Nate walked in.

“Hey Z, what’s-”Catching the voice over the speaker, he turned his head towards the ceiling, confused. “Is that-? Amaya? What the-?”

Amaya cut herself off, going silent. The room was quiet for a very long, awkward moment, and Zari had no idea where to put her eyes. She eventually settled on a spot by Nate’s feet.

“Hello, Nathaniel,” Amaya said, quietly. It felt cacophonous.

“How are you-what is-” Nate stuttered. “What the hell is going on? Amaya is that you?”

“I stole an old beacon from the cargo bay, before I left. In case I needed it,” Amaya said.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Amaya was quiet again.

“Amaya,” Nate said, firm.

“It was supposed to be for emergencies. I didn’t want you to get your hopes up,” Amaya said with a sad sigh. “Or try and talk me back onto the ship.”

Zari could feel his gaze shift to her, felt his eyes burning holes on the side of her face.

“How long have you-?”

“I don’t know, a few months,” Zari said, before Amaya was able to answer. She couldn’t look him in the eye, or tell him the whole truth. It had probably been closer to a year for her. Who knows how long for Amaya. Years for her, maybe even a decade depending on the day.

Nate crossed his arms over his chest and drew his mouth into a thin line. Zari rarely saw him get angry, she knew he had put a lot of work into not being angry, but this was finally something a step too far.

“Fuck you,” Nate said, quiet, looking down at the floor. Zari could hear the anger as it crept into his voice. “Fuck both of you.”

“Nathaniel, wait,” Amaya said, sounding even more distant and tinny over the line than normal.

But Nate didn’t stop, he stormed out of the library, smashing the button to close the door on his way out.

 

**5.**

Zari had no idea how to tell Amaya she had some sort of magical doppelganger. She felt like she should tell Amaya, because she would want to know if she had a badass British double out there. But she couldn’t figure out quite how to bring it up.

Charlie was a pain in the ass, essentially a trickster god who had already wormed her way out of the brig twice before being caught by Constantine in one of his absurd and unnecessarily convoluted spells. She was crass and rude, and really, everything Amaya wasn’t.

But she looked just like Amaya, and if Zari listened hard enough, she could hear Amaya’s voice underneath that ridiculous sounding accent. And there was once, in what Charlie assured Zari was a moment of temporary madness, that she said, softly, maybe on the verge of real emotion, that she just wanted to get back home to Abaton.

Sometimes, Zari could almost imagine that she was Amaya. But then she would walk wrong, or say something wrong, or say anything really, and the illusion was shattered.

It had become distracting. Amaya would call and all Zari could picture was Charlie, even though the only thing she and Amaya shared was a face. It felt like how after someone died, you could forget a bit what they looked like.

But she didn’t say anything, because she was trying her hardest to protect the little bubble she had built for the two of them. Nate didn’t talk to her much anymore, and Amaya felt more and more distant, but it was worth it, because there was this one magical connection keeping them together.

And if she concentrated hard enough while listening to Amaya’s voice, Zari would start seeing her again, she knew it.

 

**+1**

“I’m pregnant.”

Zari didn’t have a response. She knew this was going to happen, that it had to happen, so Esi could be born, then Mari and Kuasa. So that there would be future bearers for Amaya’s totem. She knew Amaya was with someone, that they were married, but she and Amaya never, ever talked about it. She knew this was the whole reason Amaya went back in the first place.

But still.

This meant she was never coming back.

For Amaya, it was 1954, but for Zari had only been a few weeks since they last talked. Or maybe more, or less. She didn’t even know anymore. But Amaya had years to compartmentalize and move on. She made it seem so easy, carving out this small space for Zari, which she was all too willing to accept.

Because somehow she had convinced herself that there was always that small chance, that Amaya would come back to her.

But now she knew that was stupid. A pipe dream. A delusion.

Maybe it was all a delusion.

“I’m sorry, I have to-” Zari couldn’t even finish her sentence, and hung up.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you that haven't read Hellblazer, Abaton is a magical moving town that is home to figures from English myth and folklore. I really hope the show can work it into this next season, because it would be a perfect fit.
> 
> Catch me over on [tumblr](http://angrypedestrian.tumblr.com).


End file.
